


"Lock’d together in one nest"

by winethroughwater



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, One Shot Collection, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-08-22 18:56:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16603667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winethroughwater/pseuds/winethroughwater
Summary: Collection of random (and probably pretty short) Hilda/Zelda oneshots with titles swiped from Rossetti's Goblin Market.





	1. "Would bid them cling together"

Hilda’s so small and soft.  

 

It frightens Zelda and very few things do.

 

How can something so pathetic ever protect itself?

 

She’d expected her sister to come out more ready for the world after malingering for 13 months and 10 days inside their mother.

 

But Hilda’s like one of those kittens she and Edward had discovered under the porch last winter--all rounded tummy and milk breath, eyes blind to danger.

 

But even that kitten--furious at being separated from the warm nest of its darker siblings—had mewled and cried, had thrashed its skinny orange limbs against Zelda’s palm.

 

Hilda doesn’t even seem to have it in her for a proper wail the way other babies do.

 

 _An owl_ , mother had said, looking at the poor thing’s neatly dissected belly.  _Just nature_ , she’d explained as Edward went to fetch the shovel.

 

Zelda reaches into the bassinet and pinches Hilda on her chubby thigh until she whimpers.

 

She twists the flesh as much as she dares.

 

Hilda cries, finally.  Loud and angry.

 

It’s a start.


	2. “Who knows upon what soil they fed” (part 1 of 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zelda and Hilda dealing with what Batibat stirs up with her nightmares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Dreams in a Witch House” has stuck with me since that first viewing. I needed to make my personal head cannon jive with what is established in that episode so I started writing this, had all the broad strokes down, way back in early November. I then wrote some other fics and would come back to this one occasionally. It’s finished now, save some revisions, and will have maybe two or three more parts to be posted over the weekend. This bit is short.

  


You’d think Hilda was Freya herself the way everyone has been babying and indulging her all week.  

 

And here she is, the long-suffering handmaiden, trailing along beside her.

 

Hilda’s dark baptism is in nine hours.  

 

And Zelda is concerned, for lack of a better term, that her sister is going to do something absurd—like run off.

 

That’s the _only_ reason she’s having a picnic in the woods with her little sister instead of seeing to the arrangements with their mother back at the house.

 

Hilda loves picnics. Likes packing the basket and finding just the right spot and feeding bits of sweets to the ants. All the things that make picnics silly in Zelda’s opinion.

 

Hilda eventually picks a spot beneath a small brake in the trees with an unenthusiastic, “Here will do,” and helps spread the blanket over the carpet of leaves.

 

Zelda had packed all Hilda’s favorites. Her sister couldn’t eat them—is supposed to be fasting and purifying the temple of her body—but she could watch Zelda eat them.  

 

Hilda isn’t interested in that either, though.

 

Her normally rosey cheeks are pale.  There’s the hint of bruised circles forming under her eyes.

 

It’s been less than two days.  She can’t be _that_ hungry.

 

Though, she also hasn’t slept for at least the last two nights either, which means neither has Zelda.  

 

Last night she’d gone so far as to literally kick Hilda out of her bed.  The tossing and turning. Alternatively kicking the quilt off, then pulling it up to her chin.  Bunching the pillow up, then flipping it over. Hands constantly wandering over Zelda’s gown but with no intent.

 

Finally, she just couldn’t stand it anymore.  She’d put her feet to the back of Hilda’s thighs and shoved until she’d heard a thud.

 

Zelda had her own bed back. She could finally stretch and sprawl as she pleased. But nearly as soon as the sheets beside her cooled, the darkness of the room began to weigh on her, to surround her in a way it hadn’t since she was very young. So young that the memory had been worn smooth of any detail save fear, terror at being alone in a sea of night.

 

“Hilda?”  

 

She’d had trouble getting her voice to work, like the paralysis of a dream.

 

“Sister, are you still there?”

 

“Where else would I be?”

 

Uncharacteristically sulky, but Hilda’s voice nonetheless.

 

Zelda all but ran across the space between them.

 

“Move over.”  

 

Hilda’s bed smelled of all the lumpy little bundles of dried herbs and flowers she keeps under her pillow as Zelda settled next to her sister.

 

She’d traced her fingers carefully over Hilda’s face to be sure it was really her, an old habit of all the Spellman children--the soft indent of her lower lip, round cheeks and chin, nose that wrinkled under her touch and a giggle that was unmistakably Hilda.

 

Hilda’s lashes had tasted salty when her lips found them.  

 

She’d tightened her arms around Hilda, had slowly tied her sister’s soft blonde hair in knots around her finger then let the strands slide free.  

 

Any other night and this would have had Hilda’s soft breath puffing against her neck within minutes.

 

“Will it help if I go through it all again with you?”

 

“No.”

 

“Did I tell you what Adelaide Collins got caught doing last week?  In the choir room, no less?”

 

“Why is it always the choir room?”

 

“The acoustics, obviously.”

 

***************************************************

 

With so little sleep and the sunlight warming her face, a nap wouldn’t be so bad, really.

 

If only Hilda would cooperate.

 

She’s restless again.  But not like last night.

 

Her face is rooting against Zelda’s neck but she’s not actually kissing her.

 

Every now and again a frustrated noise escapes.

 

When she says, “ _Zel_ -da,” and draws out the first syllable, it is so clearly a whine that Zelda threads her fingers through the back of Hilda’s hair so they catch beneath the base of her braid and pulls until she can look her sister in the eyes.

 

They blink, sea-blue against the sun.

 

“Get undressed.”


	3. “Who knows upon what soil they fed” (part 2 of 3)

They’ll go back to the Academy soon and there will be none of this until they are back home again.

 

Zelda indulges herself by rocking down against her heel.

 

It’s nothing to what the sight of Hilda undressing in the sunlight is doing to her.

 

By necessity, it’s almost always night when they are together. Always the hazy glow of moonlight, the gray creep of dawn through a curtain. She hasn’t before been allowed this careful and close of an inspection during the day.

 

The sunlight suits Hilda.

 

She starts to unbutton her own dress.

 

***************************

 

“Harder.”

 

Zelda rolls her thumb roughly over the hard knot of nerves she’s been teasing and stroking.

 

“No.  I want--”

 

She looks up to meet Hilda’s eyes but finds them squeezed shut; Hilda’s cheeks and throat are flushed red.

 

“ _Zelda,”_ she whines.  

 

“I’m not the mind reader, Hildegard.”

 

“How you like for me to do this to you.”

 

Zelda had long lived to make Hilda squirm in any context. It hadn’t been surprising to either of them when the predilection carried over into this. On any other occasion, Zelda might have drug this out because, sweet Satan, she’d love to watch her sister’s cherub mouth form the words.

 

She settles for watching Hilda’s eyes go wide as she says, “You want my fingers inside your cunt. Is that what you want, my sweet little Hilda?  For me to fuck you with my fingers?”

 

“Yes, Zelda.”

 

***************************

 

Objectively it is no different than any other girl she has fucked, no different really than when she fingers herself.

 

But this is Hilda she is moving inside of, who is velvety soft around her finger and warmer than the sunshine on her back. And reducing her thoughts to mediocre poetics.

 

Hilda’s knee is crooked in a way that lets Zelda prop her cheek against it and languidly watch her finger move.

 

She’s in no hurry to reach an end to this herself. They have all afternoon.

 

She adds a second finger and Hilda makes the most deliciously throaty noise.

 

**********************

 

She grinds the heel of her palm down just above Hilda’s pubic bone and finds a rhythm that sets Hilda’s hips straining up to meet her.

 

Her teeth worry Hilda’s breasts as they always do once Hilda is this far gone.

 

Last year Hilda had rounded in a way that still fascinates her. Frightens her too. If she fights the constant desire to stroke those curves, surely others must.

 

Hilda’s skin doesn’t bruise as easily as her own and more’s the pity.  

 

**********************

 

Everyone looks ridiculous at the point of orgasm.  Even she does. 

 

Hilda looks remarkably like she does when she dies. All crisis then catharsis.  Long seconds of uncharacteristic stillness, then the breath tearing out of her.

 

**********************

 

For one brief, terrifying moment Zelda thinks she will surely be struck down then and there, as she stares at her fingers. She actually looks around her as if the Dark Lord would sneak up on her from the woods to enact His vengeance.

 

There’s only a hint of it and only under her nails in two red crescents, a faint stain in one of the beds.

 

She could almost laugh at her own stupidity but something unpleasant lingers in her stomach.

 

She’d obviously just scratched Hilda.

 

It’s really all nonsense.

 

 _Pierced veils_?  Hopelessly antiquated and terribly misogynistic. She’s learned as much already and barely started her training as a midwife.  Anatomy is nothing if not endless variation.

 

Besides, no one _actually_ checks anymore. That was one indignity they did _not_ have to suffer.

 

And, honestly, if a cock wasn’t involved, it _didn’t_ count in the eyes of the Church and while that was incredibly insulting as a person not possessing such an organ, it had always been a bit of a relief when it came to Hilda and what they had been doing for the better part of the last year.

 

Though, and she’s never admitted this to anyone, there had been a naive moment during her own baptism when the High Priest had stared at her and she could have sworn he was looking right into her mind and seeing all the things she had done that had skirted the letter of their law.

 

Hilda sits up and looks so intently between her legs that Zelda does laugh; her amusement quickly turns to irritation as her sister swipes her fingers across herself and looks at what comes away.  Her fingers are wet certainly but not with blood.

 

“You aren’t _defiled_.”

 

How she hates _that_ word. Every time she says it she hears Mother’s voice.     

 

Hilda doesn’t look relieved as she should.  She looks, almost angry.  At her.

 

A tug-of-war begins between the panic rising in her chest and the throb between her thighs as realization dawns on Zelda.

 

“Did you want me to defile you?”

 

Hilda’s lips part but she doesn’t speak.

 

“Answer me, Hilda.”

 

“Yes.”

 

And that decides it.

 

It’s imperative that as much of her skin be against Hilda’s as possible. She pushes her back against the ground. Her hips fit perfectly between her sister’s thighs.

 

“I can,” she breathes into Hilda’s mouth.   

 

 _“After_ ,” she promises against Hilda’s ear.  

 

Hilda doesn’t shiver as usual; she grabs Zelda’s face and makes her meet her eyes.

 

“Now.”

 

Zelda feels herself clench, empty, drops her forehead to Hilda’s and whispers hoarsely, “It won’t make a difference.”   _How many times had she said_ after _,_ _to Hilda and to herself, “This doesn’t count, what we do”?_  “But I want to.”

 

She kisses the mark at the base of Hilda’s throat.

 

She can get her hands on one. There’s enough of them being passed around the school. It won’t raise any suspicions.

 

She could try again with her fingers, of course, enough to appease Hilda at least, but now the idea is in her head:  Hilda on her hands and knees. The way Zelda likes it best so Hilda will too. Hilda straddling her so her hands are free to knead and pinch her breasts.  She’ll fuck those glorious breasts too.

 

“You can,” Hilda gasps. “I want that too.”

 

“No silly parlor tricks.”

 

**********************

 

 

“Later?”

 

“Later.”

 

**********************

 

Little Hilda, who is otherwise so without guile, had manipulated her so thoroughly.  She can’t help but feel a spike of pride in her chest. 

 

Even if Hilda’s intent had been to damn them both to a life without coven or covenant.

 

She plucks the lavender ribbon that was halfway untied anyways out of Hilda’s hair and coaxes the blonde strands to slip free of their braid.  She arranges them over Hilda’s shoulders, next to and over her breasts, just so.

 

It’s the kind of behavior she feels duty-bound as the elder sister to reward.

 

“I want to eat you all up.”

 

Hilda’s eyes go wide with horror.

 

“You know I don’t like playing Feast.”

 

Zelda closes her eyes and takes a deep, calming breath.

 

No one in their family was ever going to let her live that down.

 

She’d _only_ bitten off the tip of Hilda’s index finger. Though she had swallowed it.

 

It’s embarrassing to think about now, the silly whims of children. It had grown back and you couldn’t even tell, and besides, she’d let _Hilda_ have the honor of being Freya.

 

But Hilda had been rocked in Mother’s lap all evening with her finger in an absurdly oversized bandage. And Zelda had to kneel in the corner for hours reading scripture after a lecture from both her father and Edward, which was particularly humiliating given only the slight difference in their ages, and the fact that he was a boy who couldn’t possibly understand her fascination with the story.

 

“I promise you _will_ like this.”

 

She is not as confident in her skill as her tone implies nor does Hilda look any less terrified as she settles between her thighs and tucks her own hair behind her ears.

 

“Don’t bite me.”

 

Her teeth tease Hilda’s inner thigh, not enough to possibly hurt, but Hilda starts to scoot away.  She hooks her arms beneath Hilda’s thighs and clasps at her hips.

 

There’s no reason she shouldn’t be good at this. She’s been excellent at everything else. And this is Hilda, after all, who doesn’t know the difference between cunniligus and cuneiform.

 

She contemplates telling her sister that she’s never done this. Not for another girl. That it’s a bit special that way.  (She’s not all that keen on fallatio either, at least not with the boys at the Academy—unless their hands are restrained in some way.  They will insist on jerking her head about.)

 

*****************

 

Hilda’s fingers dig into her hair and hold her closer. Her heel kicks Zelda in the middle of the back but Zelda doesn’t mind.   

 

*****************

 

In the end it doesn’t take any real finesse. Just enthusiasm, which she finds an embarrassing amount of.

 

If exploring her sister with her fingers before had been mesmerizing, relearning the slick topography with her mouth was something else entirely.

 

*****************

 

Somehow she’s the one who ends up all but begging to come.

 

It’s the way Hilda bites her lip and watches her that undoes her so.

 

Hilda’s been watching her since her eyes could focus as a babe in her cradle but this is different.  Hilda bites her lip in the same way she does when she’s training her fingers to play a new sonata, like Zelda is the most important, complex, beautiful composition in the world.

 

She keeps her eyes open as long as possible, watching the sun dance through the blonde curtain around her face.

*****************

 

She’ll end up freckled and maybe even sunburnt but the feel of Hilda’s hair tickling with the breeze across her naked chest is worth it as she stretches and yawns.

 

She could see the appeal of picnics if they all ended like this.

 

*****************

 

“If I were to,” Hilda starts and Zelda can’t let her say it.  

 

If she says it, it will be real.

 

“All you have to do tonight is agree to what the High Priest asks, to sign your name.”

 

The paralyzing fear from the night before is back again. A cold sweat beads on the back of her neck.  

 

Hilda’s magic will fade.   _Hilda_ will fade. She’ll grow old and die and leave Zelda here. Alone.

 

“It’s as easy as this.”  She takes Hilda’s hand, guides her index finger over her stomach to spell out each letter:  H-i-l-d-a.

 

When she’s done, Hilda’s hand lays splayed over her ribs.

 

*****************

 

“I’d make a beast joke about you if I were in a better mood.”

 

“ _I’d_ be less offended by _your_ mood if I hadn’t spent the afternoon making you come.”

 

“Don’t.”

 

“ _Correr_.   _La petite mort_.”  

 

Zelda knows how to describe the act in at least a dozen languages.  

 

“ _Kahnchat_.   _Festinare_.”

 

Hilda giggles at each one.

 

*****************

 

They are half redressed when Hilda speaks again.

 

“It isn’t as if I have any other choice.”  

 

She clearly wants Zelda to suggest something she hasn’t thought of.

 

“You will join The Church tonight.”

 

Hilda won’t look at her, is focusing on buttoning her dress like it requires her undivided attention.

 

 _“For me_ , Hilda. Promise.”

 

“I won’t embarrass you.”

 

She’s so infuriating. So lacking in any sense of self-preservation.

 

Zelda kicks the picnic basket, sends it rolling off into the brush, wishes she had something besides a blanket to grind beneath her heel.

 

When she looks at Hilda again, her sister looks so relieved that it was the basket at the receiving end of Zelda’s fury and not her that she grabs a handful of Hilda’s hair and yanks.

 

She doesn’t let go despite Hilda’s protests and prying fingers.

 

Hilda drives her to such juvenile behaviors.

 

“I love you.”

 

Hilda’s face is a mix of pain and rapture.

 

“If you love me,” she starts and has to stop Hilda from interrupting, “you’ll go through with it.”

 

*****************

 

_There is no law beyond do as thou wilt._

 

She’s delivered her sister to her baptism like a good shepherd.  

 

_Are you willing to forsake the path of Light and follow the path of Night wherever it may lead you?_

 

“Yes, Father.”

 

_Are you willing to place the Dark Lord above all others in your life, be it your loved ones, your family, your friends?_

 

Hilda hesitates and Zelda knows abject terror for the first time.  

 

If Hilda falters, she’ll follow.  

 

But Hilda lies, whispers, “Yes, Father.”

 

Zelda wraps her arms around her own stomach and fights not to be sick in front of the whole coven, lest they realize what a blasphemous and vile creature she is.

 

She has tainted Hilda somehow.

 

Hilda was her responsibility and look what she had done.

 

Her mind is clouded with torches and a mad, blind run through the woods, limbs tearing at bare skin, catching at blonde hair.  A girl who is almost familiar.

 

She’ll _keep_ failing.

 

Zelda prays.  Promises the Dark Lord everything.  She’ll dedicate her life to His service. She’ll flay the skin from her own body. Pry her nails from their beds.  If only Hilda will sign.

 

Just let her sign.  

 

And she’ll give her up.

 

*****************

 

The High Priest slides the sacred blade through Hilda’s palm and Hilda barely flinches, doesn’t cry out the way most do.  

 

Zelda swears she can hear her sister’s blood drip to the page.

 

Her fingernails bite into her own left palm, dig beside her own baptismal scar.

 

The sharpened bone scratches out Hilda’s name on the page--loopy, curvy script from unsigned poems left tucked beneath Zelda’s pillow at school.  

 

Zelda feels it against her skin like she’s fallen into a bed of ants.

 

*****************

 

Zelda is left trembling and rooted to the spot as first the extended members of the Coven and then their family file away from the clearing.

 

(For weeks to come they will comment on how terribly touching it was to see a sister so moved.)

 

“I don’t feel different.”  Hilda licks her thumb and rubs at the blood on her forehead. “Did you feel different?  You said you felt different.”

 

Hilda’s giddy with the relief of having it over with if nothing else.

 

“You don’t have to worry now. It’s done. And I’m starving. I think those things mother made me drink had spoiled.  _Zelda_?”

 

Hilda’s fingers lace beneath her hair and rest on the back of her neck.

 

She smells like smoke and blood and sweat. She smells changed.

 

“Sister?”

 

But the slow, tip-toed kiss that follows, the soft way Hilda’s lips brush against hers, the sweet taste of her when her lips part, that’s the same kiss that always steals Zelda’s breath away.

 

“Stop.”

  

Hilda either doesn’t hear her or doesn’t care; nor does Zelda heed her own directive because this will be the last time.

 

Hilda tucks her face into the side of Zelda’s neck.  She ultimately, unwittingly, marks the end of them.

 

Zelda’s fingers stroke Hilda’s throat. Her sister’s pulse thrums under her fingers.

 

It will beat there for lifetimes now.

 

Her thumb brushes over the oft-kissed witch’s mark.

 

She closes her eyes and tightens her grasp; her arm goes rigid. She pushes Hilda back a step and raises her back to her toes.

 

“If you ever kiss me like that again, I’ll kill you and leave you to rot so far from home your spirit will never find us and you’ll be alone forever.”

 

It’s an old threat with a new caveat.  

 

She lets her go and waits for the tears to start.

 

Hilda coughs and rubs at her throat, glares at Zelda, cross but nothing more.

 

“That’s not funny, sister. Not tonight.”

 

“It isn’t supposed to be.  I’m done playing around with you, Hilda.”

 

Hilda knows exactly what she’s talking about now. She can see it in her eyes.

 

“Stop it.”

 

“It’s time to grow up, Hilda.”

 

“You said—”

 

“‘ _I said.’_ I said what?  That I love you?”

 

“I know you do.”

 

Hilda says it with such absolute certainty that Zelda feels it like a blow to the stomach.

 

“Who could love _you_?”

 

*********************

 

To her credit, Hilda does not run crying.

 

Zelda can see her hair, glowing white in the moonlight, several feet in front of her all the way home.

 

Hilda eats her favorite sweets and basks in the attention of their parents and brother and assorted cousins and aunts and uncles.

 

When she comes into their room, she’s bathed and looks no different than before, save for the bandage wrapping her hand.  

 

She turns down her lamp and gets in her own bed.

 

She even tells Zelda goodnight.

 

*********************

 

All the paintings and poems have lied.

 

Martyrs are supposed to feel some sort of ecstasy. A final reward for trading their last breath for their cause.

 

Zelda just feels alone.

 

She falls asleep imagining Freya’s eyes going wide yet blind, pupils blown, somehow still conscious enough to feel the blade of the ax catch in her femur, unable to scream because she had slit her own stupid throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I owe so many of you reviews and I swear those will happen this week. For real this time.


	4. “Who knows upon what soil they fed” (part 3 of 3)

Many years later.

 

“ _Hilda_?”

 

She’s unbalanced from the whiskey, but mostly from that horrible dream.

 

It’s the foxglove that has her sister so deeply asleep that she hasn’t responded.

 

Hilda had been alive and well no more than an hour ago when Zelda had quietly asked, “Do you want to sleep in my bed tonight, sister?”

 

If Hilda had agreed then--if she hadn’t weighed the offer over and said, “I think I’ll be alright over here.  Know where you are if I need you”--it might have been enough.

 

Rationally, she knows Hilda is asleep no more than a foot from her now.

 

But she isn’t feeling rational.  Nothing about tonight has been within the realm of reason.

 

It hadn’t been rational to shuck off her gown, half-convinced it was stained with grave-dirt and Hilda’s congealing blood, and to stumble blindly towards her sister, and it isn’t rational to take another step until her thighs bump Hilda’s bed, Hilda’s bed that still smells of charms that make her nose sting.

 

*********************

 

Hilda is softer than she remembers; she takes up less space here, seems smaller in the dark, now that Zelda’s stretching out next to her, over her.

 

She maps the curve of Hilda’s jaw, finds her mouth and presses her finger into the cleft in her lower lip.

 

“Zelds?”  Her voice slurs, more asleep than awake.

 

Zelda doesn’t want to fight, doesn’t answer.

 

She wants Hilda’s ridiculous nightgown to cooperate so she can hitch Hilda’s thigh around her hip but it’s caught beneath her sister and Hilda is as good as awake now, saying, “Stop it” and “You’re drunk,” and trying to find her shoulders to push her away.

 

Zelda shakes her head but it’s dark and she’s sure Hilda can’t see.

 

She’s far from drunk and farther from the ability to be deterred.

 

Hilda’s breasts spill over her fingers now when she cups them. The discovery forces her thigh between Hilda’s.

 

Hilda’s hands shove hers away.

 

“Dammit, Zelda.  I told you— _no_.”

 

It feels like the stupid, childish way they used to slap at each other’s hands, fighting to come out on top.

 

“ _Please_.”

 

She’s crying again. Not wailing in that pathetic way she was in the nightmare but not far from it.

 

Her throat is raw and she wants to throttle Hilda for not giving her this one simple thing that she so desperately needs.

 

Her hand falls to Hilda’s throat.

 

Hilda stills.

 

The two of them could play this part out through muscle memory alone.  

 

But Zelda’s fingers don’t tighten; they skim across the side of Hilda’s neck, feeling for her pulse.

 

Her tongue darts out to taste it, beating--too fast--but strong and familiar.

 

“I—I need--”

 

“Okay.”

 

Hilda would never be cruel enough to make her voice this.

 

Zelda is enough a masochist to say it anyways.

 

“I need _you_.”

 

*********************

 

Hilda bunches her gown to her waist and makes it clear there it will stay.

 

If she had stripped naked, it would not have had as immediate an effect.  Hilda through cotton in the summer, flannel in the winter—rubbing and rutting and biting their lips sore to be quiet.

 

*********************

 

They still fit together if she wets her fingers in her mouth.

 

She’ll tear this out of her if she has to.

 

*********************

 

“Slow down.”  Hilda’s fingers are rooted into her shoulders.  “I’m not going anywhere.”

 

Only she had.

 

Zelda had clawed her way through the last foot of earth and found something not-Hilda.

 

There was no more Hilda no matter how she had pleaded and cursed, caressed and shook. Just a husk wearing her sister’s face and her sat screaming with ten black half-moons under her nails.

 

So Hilda can grit her teeth.

 

*********************

 

She’s mouthed Hilda’s breasts until the fabric is wet and sure to have gone sheer.

 

She thinks of the rosy hue of Hilda’s nipples clashing with the fuchsia roses on her gown.

 

She drags her teeth along one but does not bite.

 

Hilda gasps; Zelda’s fingers slide deeper, easier.

 

*********************

“Zelda—I—”

 

Zelda makes room for Hilda’s hand to fit between them.

 

Hilda touches herself, hastens the inevitable. Zelda swallows her cry.

 

*********************

 

This is what she needed. To reach inside Hilda. To taste Hilda’s breath and feel her heart beating against her own chest.

 

It doesn’t matter that Hilda’s hands stay chastely on her waist while she brings herself off against her thigh, because Hilda still knows the exact moment to cover her mouth with her palm.

 

Her lips brush a gardening callous then find something else.

 

“Dark Lord, forgive me.”  

 

She kisses the rigid scar that runs parallel to Hilda’s heart line.  

 

“I still love you so.”

 

Hilda pulls her hand away.

 

The corner of Zelda’s mouth rises as fingertips trace her chin and cheekbones, the slope of her nose, the tiny lines that have etched themselves next to her eyelids.

 

She isn’t sure who her sister finds, but Hilda’s fingers are too quickly gone and busy tugging down the hem of her gown and righting herself.

 

“You should probably go back to your own bed soon.”

 

*********************

  
She can’t even be angry at Hilda.  She’d slit her own stupid throat years ago.


	5. "mother-hearts beset with fears"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-"A Midwinter's Tale"--They take Leticia to Moon Valley

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know what is more surprising: that I forgot I had written 95% of this the week after the special or that I have written something that could technically be read as a gen fic. I obviously did not write it with that intention. So squint and pretend it is shippy. Satan save us from "they're just sisters."

**Now**

 

“I will see you later, my little alligator.”

 

Hilda squeezes soft, squirmy baby toes.

 

“I’ll be just outside.”

 

She squeezes her sister’s tense shoulder.

 

* * *

 

She’d brought Desmelda a bundle of herbs that only thrive in a greenhouse this time of year and a new stack of paperbacks, but standing with her outside her cottage, trying not to imagine what Zelda is going through inside, Hilda adds, “I know what Zelda has told you about keeping her away, but if something should happen or you need us, if you need anything at all, just get word to me.”

  


**Before**

 

These talks had always been easier under the cover of night, curled to face each other, features softened by the moonlight and the three steps between their beds.  

 

“I know you’ve made up your mind. . . but if the way I reacted, if my helping more, would have made a difference, I’m sorry.”

 

“No.  You were right.”

 

“Now there’s something I haven’t heard in at least a century.”

 

“But only to a point.”

 

“Of course.”

 

“Taking her from that man, saving her, was no mistake.”

 

“Nor was loving her, Zelda.”

 

“Assuming you’d--well, it wasn’t fair. Not when you’ve already raised--”

 

“I don’t regret a second spent with Sabrina and neither do you. Besides our niece isn’t quite done raising yet. She’s causing me more sleepless nights now than she ever did as a baby.”

 

It, _Leticia_ , had come at the worst possible time--when everything seemed to be falling apart around them and she was trying to figure out who she was outside of her family.

 

She _had_ felt manipulated.

 

But _how_ Zelda loved the babe. 

 

Then she didn’t feel so forced to spend time in the kitchen with Zelda and the baby. To warm up the bottle before Zelda asked for it. To rock her niece in their mother’s old chair.

 

Hilda’s chest aches for Lettie who isn’t even gone yet, but mostly for Zelda and who she was, even for a brief time, thanks to Lettie.

 

“Zelda . . . if you can’t give her up . . . I promise I _will_ help you raise her and I’ll fight the Dark Lord Himself with you everyday if that's what it takes to keep her safe and happy. Despite the danger, she would have a good life with us.”

 

“I can’t risk it. Taking her to Desmelda is the best option for Leticia.”

 

Zelda is quiet for so long Hilda wonders if she has fallen asleep, _hopes_ she has, but then Zelda whispers, “I just don’t know how I’m going to do it. I love her so much.”

 

“I know, Zelds. I know.”

 

* * *

 

Zelda had slept fitfully. She’d heard her tossing and turning, sniffling against her pillow, most of the night.

 

She’s asleep now, though her lips are still set in a frown, as Hilda gets up to tend to Lettie before the babe’s faint fret turns into an outright cry.

 

She settles with her into the window seat, tucks the soft, black blanket beneath her little chin to ward off the cold and pulls her own robe closer around herself.

 

“You and I haven’t really had a proper conversation, have we?”

 

She glances in her sister’s direction, but she’s still asleep.

 

“If you’d gotten here even a month before, I would have fought Zelda for the privilege of spoiling you rotten. And now you’re going away.  But to Desmelda’s and she lives in the forest and there’s plants and animals--more than you can even imagine now. You can play in the mud and no one will fuss at you.

 

“It is not going to be easy. But two women have made remarkable sacrifices for you, your mother in bringing you into this world and that one over there who’s been caring for you since then.

 

“Though I must warn you. Desmelda is not the devastating beauty that Zelda is. That will take some getting used to.”

 

Zelda is awake and watching them, chin in hand, elbow propped on her pillow.  The frown is gone, almost.

 

“But she survived a high priest who wanted to hurt her too. She’ll teach you how to be a survivor. I’m sorry that’s something you have to start learning so soon.”

  


**After**

 

Her mouth is poised to offer some small comfort but Zelda rushes past her.

 

“Not here.”  

 

Along the trail leading from Moon Valley, Hilda nearly has to run to keep up with her sister’s longer stride.  Calling her name has not slowed her.

 

The car is within sight when Zelda collapses in on herself.  

 

Hilda could have at least made her fall easier.

 

As it is, she sinks to the damp leaves herself and wraps her arms around Zelda.

 

She’s never watched Zelda’s mourning from the outside. Their hearts have usually broken in tandem.

 

She feels fairly useless.

 

* * *

 

Zelda pulls away and swipes too roughly against her ruined mascara.

 

“Look at me.  Carrying on this way.”

 

“It’s just me, sister.”  Zelda’s cheeks are cold even to her chilled fingers.  She’s much more careful in stroking away the black trails. “And I have seen you at your worst.”

 

The way Zelda laughs isn’t pleasant but at least it’s something.

 

“When we get home, I’ll draw you a bath and bring you a bottle of whiskey.”

 

* * *

 

Hilda is sitting at her vanity, massaging lotion into her hands, when Zelda comes into their room, cheeks flushed from the bath and the drink.

 

“You’re not going back to your room tonight, are you?”

 

“I thought I might impose for a few more nights.”

 

“If you must.”


End file.
